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166 of 168 people found the following review helpful.
UPDATE Bose Bluetooth Series 2 vs. Plantronics Voyager PRO HD vs. Motorola ELITE Silver vs. Motorola FLIP
By Joshua Brooks
Bose Bluetooth Series 2 vs. Plantronics Voyager PRO HD vs. Motorola ELITE Silver vs. Motorola FLIPUpdate: I ended up keeping the Bose, however, after about 2-3 months of use (I switch the headset on and off a lot), the switch broke. Bose was awesome in handling the return, however, I wish they would have created a stronger switch. Not everyone wants to leave a bluetooth on all day.Cost:1. FLIP: $60-$752. Elite Silver: $80-$1003. Plantronics HD: $75-$1004. Bose: Hard to find for less than $130-$150 (check fleabay or your cell provider)Conclusion: Elite Silver has been dropping in price rapidly. Bose is hard to find discounted.Ease of use:1. FLIP: Open it up, it's on, close the flap, it's off. Great for saving battery power.2. Elite Silver: Turn the ear piece, it's on, turn back, it's off. A little tricky, as sometimes not sure which direction to turn it.3. Bose: Switch to turn on and off. Answers quickly. Hard to put it on ear quickly. Buttons a little non-intuitive.4. Plantronics: Hold button down to turn on and off. Has 4 seconds ever felt so long?Conclusion: Why o why don't more companies adopt the Motorola flip design. I love having a headset that I can sit down next to me, and then when someone calls, pick it up, put it on easily. AND save battery power. Who wants to charge a headset every day?Features:1. Flip: Super easy to turn on and off. Best design ever.2. Elite Silver comes with cool storage case that doubles as a recharger for up to 3 charges. Tells you battery life left over when you put on.3. Bose: Easy on and off switch (why don't more companies go back to switches)?4. Plantronics automatically answers the phone when you put it on your ear. However, it doesn't turn it on and off when you do this, so no battery savings. Also tells you how much battery left when you put on.Conclusion: Love the storage case on the Elite Silver that doubles as a charging station. Love the switch on the BOSE for on/off. But nothing beats the Motorola flip boom mikes for ease/battery savings.Comfort:1. Elite Silver: Is lightweight, fit comfortably on ear. Once you figure it out, goes on quick and secure.2. Plantronics: I like the heaviness of this item and love the boom mike (surprisingly, the boom mike didn't help sound quality).3. Bose: Has unique inside earpiece that seems like it won't work, but does. It is very loud/sharp, and for some reason I got ear fatigue when talking for more than 30min+. 4. Elite Flip: I'm not a big fan of the small string earpieces. It felt lightweight and fragile and non-secure.Conclusion: I like the secure feel of the Plantronics. It's heavy, locks in on the ear, quick to put on and off, but the boom mike adds little to the sound quality.Battery Life:1.) Elite Silver: Easily recharged up to three times, if you use it's portable case.2.) Plantronics: I got a good day's use out of it.3.) Bose: This one seemed to die faster than the others. I don't think it is rated as high, but make sure to turn it off, or else it will be dead the next day.4.) Elite Flip: Did not test thoroughly enough to comment on this.Sound Quality: This is a tough category as always. I use mine in the car (road noise) and have a larger head (harder for mike to pick up sounds around my cheeks). Your experience may differ depending on your signal, location, face shape, and usage.1. Bose: By far the most clear. Loud volume. People could hear me. I could hear them.2. Plantronics: People could make out my voice (when driving) if I spoke very slowly and carefully. Boom mike did not seem to help.3. ELITE Silver: I loved the sound of this, but people could not hear me when I spoke. My cheeks too big? The mike too far from my mouth?4. Elite Flip: Didn't test this one as much, but people struggled to hear me.Conclusion (ALL). I wish the Elite Silver had better sound quality when driving, because I liked most of the features. If I could design a perfect headset, it would have the flip boom mike of the FLIP. Have the comfort and charging features of the ELITE SLIVER. Have the sound quality of the BOSE. And the strength/durability/easy on and off your ear of the plantronics.People criticize Bose for being nothing more than an advertising company, but why do they have the best two items: Noise Cancelation Headphones and Bluetooth heasdsets...Come on Motorola, you're almost there! I LOVE your flip boom mike on/off.Final Assessment:Bose: Best sound quality. Great fit. Expensive. LOUD VOLUME. This is the first headset I have EVER had to turn down the volume on.Plantronics: Rugged design, nice boom mike. Not good enough vocal quality. Annoying to turn on and off, but easy to quickly put on your ear.Motorola Elite Silver: Great innovations, great comfort. Need to work on their sound quality.Motorola Flip: LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the flip mike. Very lightweight (pro or con?), unsecure, not good enough sound quality.
202 of 214 people found the following review helpful.
Wow. Finally a near perfect BT headset
By Paris Tx Guy
I really never knew Bose was making these BT headsets until I began a search for the best one a few days ago. I currently own a Jawbone Icon, Blueant Q2 and a couple of high dollar Plantronics headsets. All are very good at something and not so great at others. IMHO the Bose Series 2 has gotten it right.First off fit is everything to me. I have a set of Bose headphones, with the same designed ear piece, and I love the fit so I was hoping this would be the same which it was. Just make sure you use the correct size, start with the headset turned down and just rotate it towards your mouth. The soft rubber piece slips right under the middle fold of your ear, holds it very secure and you will not know it is there.Second is sound quality. I am talking about outgoing and incoming, clarity and volume. The volume of this ear piece is special. I know that sounds flaky but I have had enough of these headsets to know that most do not have adequate volume if your hearing is not like it use to be. Absolutely great with this headset. Noise cancellation is also top notch. I have not tested it in a too many of different environments, but have done things like driving 70MPH with my window down while leaving a message on another phone. Also I will crank up the music while doing the same since other voices can sometimes cause issues. So far, I have not been disappointed. The messages I listen to are right up there at the top of all sets I have tried and probably surpass them. Incoming clarity is just as good. First off, they are Bose so listening to music from your phone (if you have a phone that allows this) is superb for a BT headset. I did have some slight static on calls when I first got it. I went ahead and removed the Bose from my iPhone 4 memory and rebooted the phone. Then did the setup again and I no longer have any issues at all.Third is battery life and options. I don't really know about battery life yet so I cannot comment. Options is a personal thing so I will explain why I was looking for a BT headset that did not have built in voice commands. I have a new iPhone 4S arriving tomorrow and if you have followed this at all, you know about "Siri". It is Apples new, and extremely advanced, voice recognition/personal assistant. Since I will be working with this a lot, I do not want the extra moves needed to get me to the phones voice commands. This set fits the bill perfectly.Oh yeah, one thing I really like (and I know others do this as well) is the ability to wear this while using my iPhones Garmin navigation. It will send upcoming turns to my BT headset so I don't have to worry about hearing it from my phone's speaker over any music. The Bose does not block out all sound so you can easily have a conversation with the person next to you while wearing it.Ok...long winded I know so I will wrap things up.This BT headset is expensive compared to others, but well worth it IMHO. Is it perfect? No. Is it the closest I found for fit, volume, clarity out and in etc? Absolutely. Will it be for you? No idea. LOL** Side note. I am impatient so I ordered express shipping (actually ships from Bose when ordered through Amazon at the time of my purchase). It was listed as 1-3 days for this. Bose shipped it overnight priority which was great.
247 of 283 people found the following review helpful.
meh...
By Scott Bessel
First off let me say I am far rom a Bose fan, I feel their audio equipment's sound quality and reproduction is far far from perfect, especially for their inflated costs. Yet since I travel a LOT and I own a pair of their QC3 headphone and absolutely love them, they were the best I have found.I have had a LOT of Bluetooth headsets, my most recent was the Jawbone ERA, which I had to get replaced twice, and then nothing but troubles with the quality with it, where I would have to do a hard reset on it and my phone when the audio quality just started fading away, I decided to try something different.Here enters the Bose BT2, which from my understanding just came out and is their 2nd revision and latest model.First off compared to any of the other headsets it feels like Bose is 5 years behind, in features, functions and usability. They have no iPhone battery icon, I mean really, this is supposed to be state of the art and for me to check battery life I have to look at an LED when powering up and then guess at remaining battery? Really?I use my headset for standard calls, as well as to stream audio, as I do a lot of walking and I find it more convenient to use the same headset for both.The audio quality is far superior that any other headset I have used, both voice and music, and everyone I talk with says the quality on their end is great. The auto volume as well as noise cancellation works well and is non obtrusive.The problem I run into is the functionality and execution.First I wanted to enable it for multipoint, well this is not enabled by default, so after some contorted button pushes I was able to enable this, but it is no where near seamless and is very difficult to get it to correctly connect to the preferred device. My Jawbone ERA did this flawlessly, as others.Also now if I turn the headset on and want to listen to music (A2DP) it just doesn't work, voice calls are fine. I have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get it to recognize the music stream, I disconnect, reset, turn bluetooth on/off... never the same combo, this is the only headset that I have seen these issues.It is comfortable, light, feels and fits nice in my ear, I like the physical on/off switch, and getting to my iPhones voice command, no Siri is very fast and a single button push instead of a push-hold like most. I wish it were a bit smaller/compact in size so it felt better in my pocket.I would give this headset 5 stars if they 1: updated the firmware to fix the multipoint and A2DP connect issues and 2: added the iPhone battery icon (in my book this is a MUST for any new Bluetooth headset)Now I have talked to support and they have a huge "I am Bose, therefore it is perfect the way it is and all the problems are yours alone" attitude, so they were not helpful at all.I have used this headset with my iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPad and Macbook pro, and the issues/symptoms are the same on all.I hope this helps.
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Generic S8 ripoff doesn't function
